Saturday, March 03, 2007

So...What's Your Story...

One of the best ways to approach any design problemis to have a story. Why? Well, it helps with several potential designproblems and has the added benefit allowing you to 'talk' about yourwork to a teach, professor, client or boss. The story you make up willenable you to choose important visual elements as well as theirlocation. One needs to strike a balance of too much vs. too littleimagery. Too much can result in visual clutter and too little can leadto 'dead spots' on the page (not to be confused with smartly usednegative space).

This was a college project that I enjoyed. Our instructor brought in a CD from one of his friend's bands called Basement Apartment. We listened to the music to get a taste for it (pretty mellow 'college' style music). The title of the single wasLearning to Fall. My story for this was two-fold. The first involvedthe packaging...I played off of basement apartment by using a smallfridge to encase the cover. This took care of several areas because Ithought of theCD as parts of the appliance. The back showed the backand allowed for nesting places for text. The front and inside (which isthe inside of the fridge) allowed for the logo to be placed as a'product logo'...(if my memory serves correctly we had to design thelogo and I thought it turned out pretty well...but in my old age Icould just be making things up...)

The second part of the story involves the songtitle. When I thought of 'learning to fall' I figured there was a kindof irony to learning to ride a bike without training wheels. Becausethere involves a lot of falling (in my case and every other child I'vewatched) as opposed to riding in the beginning, I figured that was theactual objective...learning to take the fall with as little damage aspossible. So I played up the idea of a financially poor little girl ina city trying to do just that. There is a sense of feeling grown upwhen the feat is accomplished (both the safe falling as well as theactual riding) so I found a dress that is starting to be outgrown andmade a Polaroid image of the girl, bandaged knee, holding a wrench andtraining wheel...and of course fridges make great places totape 'current' historical events... so it all played together...

The inside booklet was of a brick street (that was compositedtogether) that had bits of foliage shooting up through the cracks...andas much as it seems ladies like to grow up and move off to the city(maybe a bit of a stereotype but it fits the story)...every little girlin the city would like to have a lot of nice grass to play on...and itsure makes falling a lot easier...grass between the toes...etc...sothere are pictures that were laid out by the child on the alley streetand somehow she ends up in her make-believe place...so the originalpicture is now empty and we see her shoes and where she has taken offher training wheels lying in the grass photos.

Pretty much any type of design can benefit from such planning with a story. Even if the designer is the only person that knows the story, it can lead to a'deeper' and more visuallyinteresting piece. When a viewer has an emotional reaction to a work they tend to enjoy it more and remember it longer.